Airplane Movies

On my journey to and from Nigeria I took opportunity to watch some movies. I watched

The Wizard of Lies

The Circle

Brigsby Bear

Norman: The moderate rise and tragic fall of a New York fixer

I did try one other but abandoned it. These I enjoyed, although the first (The Wizard of Lies starring Robert de Niro) cannot be recommended because of the bad language, etc, throughout. It is a chronicle of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, which defrauded his clients of billions of dollars and sent the stock exchange crashing. It is interesting as Madoff appears not to have thought of himself as a bad character despite hiss crimes and their devastating effects.

The Circle, with Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, is an interesting take on the whole Internet world we find ourselves in. A silicon valley company proves to have cultic tendencies and a lot to hide. The film rather ducks out of the case it has built at the end. Hard to get sponsors otherwise I guess.

Brigsby Bear (Mark Hamill) begins rather weirdly but then gets into more recognisable patterns as it progresses. Having thought about it for a while now I would guess it is a sort of parable in which the people who kidnapped the Mark Hamill character as a baby but gave him an enjoyable but limited life where he loved watching Brigsby Bear's adventures stands for the old studio system in Hollywood. The characters return to his true parents and the making of his own movie helped by friends is perhaps a plea for independent film makers.

Norman (Richard Gere) is a typically Jewish story based in New York among Jews. The Norman character is interesting enough and the plot is very neat. Lovely film.